on iowa television. nick s first call was to an nbc affiliate in des moines, iowa, who-tv. he asked a guy who picked up the phone in the newsdesk if anyone there happened to notice the colbert super pac ad running on our affiliate or any other iowa station. the guy at the newsdesk said, immediately, quote, yeah, it ran during our 5:00 newscast yesterday. now, this does not mean stephen colbert is to be trusted. it means that we here at the last word have now proven that stephen colbert has told the truth exactly once in his life. well, two if you count his testimony to congress which, as viewers of this show already know, i was really impressed with. but because colbert told the truth about his super pac wasting its dirty filthy super prk ac money by putting a silly
front-runner. it bodes very, very well. how it plays out, it s giving the romney campaign pause. it s not the unanimous welcome to rick perry. mike huckabee who lost the 2008 straw poll, won the caucus had this to say. he may decide he s not going to play iowa at all. maybe that s what this decision by announcing on the day of the straw poll is about. i guarantee you the other candidates will beat the daylights out of him for not respecting the straw poll, so will the iowa republican party. out there the conversations on the streets will be it s bad form to make the decision when it s in iowa. i love how he refers to the streets the streets of iowa will rise up against you.
forward. a lot of people pay defense in the debate. who has to score in the debate? the most pressure here is on tim pawlenty whose whole strategy revolves around doing well in iowa and at this point is boiling down to doing well and it ends day after tomorrow. he s the one with the most at stake here. just to sort of come out of here looking like looking like a serious presidential candidate who his activists can get excited about and choose. ben smith of politico, thank you for joining me tonight. thank you. coming up, texas governor rick perry decides it s high time that the republican presidential primary had a gun-toting cowboy boot-wearing candidate. his spokesman announced when perry will announce. and sarah palin figures she can make one more desperate claim for attention in iowa before the presidential campaign leaves her behind. introducing the schwab mobile app.
logical tap truck is not the way to go. what we want is for them to listen to their stitch whens and come back to work. david axelrod, thank you for joining us. good luck handling all of the republican crowds tonight in iowa. got my gym shoes on just in case. okay, thank you, david. see you. bye. come up up, steven colbert is back in the rewrite for what he s doing with his filthy journey superpac money and after we caught him not telling a lie about i. but first, more on mitt romney s very, very bad day after he faced off with angry iowa voters over social security and tacks. taxes.
provided real estate and lower tax rates. banks figured out by calling themselves real estate companies they could get a special tax break. we said no more of that. we re not going to game with the system. so if there are taxpayers who find ways to distort the tax law and take advantage of what i call loopholes in a way that are not intended by the congress or intended by the people, absolutely, i close those loopholes, but, there are a lot of people who use the word loophole to raise taxes on people. that s what i do. i will not raise taxes. joining me now from ames, iowa, politico ben smith. that questioner had read your article today before going after mitt romney. take us through what you found on how romney appealed to s&p using massachusetts increase in taxes to keep their ratings high. his answer to some degree is